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1. Finance - This module includes standard bookkeeping functionality, automatically updating the general ledger and tracking accounts receivable and accounts payable. It can handle account reconciliations to help the accounting department close the books in  an efficient and timely manner. The finance module has billing capabilities, as well as functionality to generate key financial statements like balance sheets, profit and loss statements and cash flow statements.

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2. Human Capital Management (HCM) - Establishing strong control over data and processes related to people, such as payroll and employee records, is a necessary tool  for any business with more than a few employees. An HCM module stores employee data in a central location and tracks the basic information—like salary or hourly rate, reporting structure and paid time off—that’s needed to accurately calculate payroll.

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3. Procurement - The procurement module, also known as the purchasing module, allows the organization to improve the processes involved in a company getting the goods, services and materials it needs to build or sell its own products or services. Companies can build and keep a list of approved vendors in this module and tie those suppliers to certain items. It can also automate requests for a quote, then track and analyze all those quotes in one place. By centralizing the purchase order process, the procurement application enables the company to better rationalize invoices, track purchase orders and prepare payments to suppliers.

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4. Inventory Management - For companies that sell products, automated inventory management is a must. You can’t sell what you don’t have—or don’t know you have. Inventory management software moves the tracking of individual SKUs from spreadsheets to a database that updates in real time to enable accurate and real-time tracking of quantities of goods and multiple locations, including goods in transit.

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5. Order Management - Tracking orders in spreadsheets can also quickly become labor intensive in a growing business. The order management module helps track orders from when they are first received, to when they are matched with available inventory in one of your facilities (whether a warehouse or retail store), to shipping and delivery. An order management solution integrated with your inventory management tool ensures that items ordered are actually in stock to prevent backorders and deliver a positive customer experience. This connection can also help improve demand forecasting.

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6. Warehouse Management - For any business that operates a warehouse—whether a distributor, manufacturer or retailer—a warehouse management module can lead to major efficiency gains by digitizing and automating put away, fulfillment and shipping processes from start to finish. A warehouse management module complements the features of inventory and order management modules. This application can support different picking strategies like batch picking, wave picking and zone picking depending on which is most efficient for a given business, to increase order fulfillment rates and the accuracy of orders.

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7. Manufacturing - Manufacturers are typically looking for a tool that helps them build and execute against a bill of materials (BOM), which is like a recipe for the creation of a product. The BOM helps the company plan for production of its goods by ensuring that it has the correct ingredients in the right amount to execute all work orders. In that way, the manufacturing module is tied directly to demand and supply planning, which the SCM module usually manages.

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8. Supply Chain Management (SCM) - Another module with many features that can help optimize operations is supply chain management (SCM). Some of the SCM module’s functionality overlaps with that of inventory, order and warehouse management, but its basic aim is to lend end-to-end visibility into the company’s supply chain and its partners, from sub-suppliers to distributors, in order to ensure business continuity and compliance and reduce supply chain risk.

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9. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) - A cache of customer and prospect data is stored in the company’s CRM module. Leading CRM applications have three core capabilities: sales force automation, customer service management and marketing automation. The first helps sales reps manage leads and opportunities and put together quotes. More robust CRM modules can also forecast sales by leveraging historical data about transactions and buying behavior. The customer service piece tracks the company’s communication history with customers and prospects—the date and time of calls and emails, for example— and their purchase history. Finally, marketing automation capabilities help businesses manage campaigns and segment their audience to determine who should be targeted for certain promotions or cross-sell opportunities.

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10. Professional Service Automation (PSA) - Also called a service resource management module, this application allows an organization to plan and manage projects. The PSA module tracks the status of projects, managing human and capital resources throughout, and allows managers to authorize expenses and timesheets. It facilitates collaboration between teams by keeping all related documents in a shared place.

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11. Ecommerce - For businesses that want to sell products online, whether to consumers (B2C) or other businesses (B2B), an ecommerce module is essential. There’s a reason for the urgency to start selling online—the National Retail Federation reports that online sales grew nearly 24% year-over-year during the 2020 holiday shopping season. This module typically comes with user-friendly tools that empower non-technical employees to easily add new items, update product content (item descriptions, titles, specs, images, etc.) and change the look and feel of the website.

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12. Marketing Automation - While the CRM can often maneuver basic marketing automation, a module dedicated to this can offer more extensive capabilities. Data from the CRM system can feed into the marketing automation tool to drive targeted marketing campaigns across numerous channels, including social, email, video and more. A marketing automation module can also maintain various contact lists. It can measure the performance of various campaigns in detail, as well, to shape future marketing plans and spend.

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The data in one module drives information or outcomes in another—the true value of an ERP system.

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